


Draught of the Living Arse

by AvecPlaisir



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-18 11:31:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2346971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvecPlaisir/pseuds/AvecPlaisir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One-shot. MWPP at Hogwarts. Sort of a character study of Sirius. Eh.  </p><p>Or: In which Sirius has been a casually cruel person, but now is trying to rectify it. Well, with one person in particular. Baby steps, Sirius.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Draught of the Living Arse

**Author's Note:**

> Please excuse the slight Moony-is-pale-and-sickly-boohoo trope. I just couldn't resist.

Sirius Black was not pleased.

His belly was full from an exceptionally excellent dinner, he was basking in the attention of three fourth year girls who were trying to work up the courage to talk to him, his homework was done—he’d finished the assignments he was going to turn in, at any rate, and the rest he knew he could afford to half-ass the next morning.

Moony would be disappointed in him. He grinned.

The Common Room was particularly boisterous today. All Sirius’s fellow sixth year Gryffindors were celebrating the end of term prematurely. Sirius didn’t blame them—they’d already taken major end of term exams in nearly all of their classes, and were letting loose after several weeks of cramming and too much homework.

Sirius looked over to where James and Peter were engaged in a particularly intense game of Wizard Chess, where a crowd of onlookers had gathered, passing around sweets sneaked from the kitchen and downing bottles of Butterbeer.

Sirius didn’t know why he wasn’t pleased. The only thing that would make the day better would be if Snivellus suddenly developed an allergy to air. And yet…

 _Moony,_ Sirius realized. _I want Moony to be here._

And without considering it further, he stood.

“HEY PRONGS!” He bellowed, over the noise of students who were happy and wanted the world to know.

“WHAT?” James bellowed back, not looking up. The only thing that would distract James from any game—for James needed to win at everything as much as he needed to breathe—would be Lily Evans. (James, apparently, needed Evans more than he needed either to win or to breathe. It was a good thing that James’ need of Evans was not a matter of life or death, or else James would be very unfortunate indeed. Unfortunate, and neither winning, nor breathing.)

The problem was, Peter was _good_ at Wizard Chess. 

“WHEN DOES MOONY GET OFF DUTY?”

Remus was a prefect—of course. He’d been made one last year, and Sirius couldn’t say exactly why it had been a shock to him when Remus had told him through a letter.But after the initial shock and fear that Remus’s being a prefect would ruin their mischief had worn off, Sirius felt proud of Remus. And Sirius knew that James felt same the same way, and the Peter was merely impressed.

 But, for the life of Sirius, he could not remember Remus’s duty schedule.

“HE’S NOT ON DUTY TONIGHT.”

Sirius frowned. If Remus wasn’t on duty, then why wasn’t he in the Common Room, enjoying himself like everyone else?

“WHERE IS HE?’

“OH FOR GOODNESS SAKE!” snapped Georgia Vallery. “BLACK, JUST TAKE FIVE BLOODY STEPS AND THEN YOU AND POTTER WON’T HAVE TO SHOUT ACROSS THE ROOM.”

“I’M SORRY, WHAT WAS THAT, VALLERY?” Sirius bellowed in her direction. “I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF MY BREAKING HEART.”

She threw a particularly disdainful look in his direction and flipped her hair over her shoulder moodily.

Vallery had broken up with him two days ago, claiming that Sirius was a horrible boyfriend and was only using her for snogging.

‘ _Well, of course_ ,” Sirius had replied, bewildered. ‘ _What did you expect_?’

Sirius took _six_ bloody steps forward and then prompted, “So, Prongs?”

“He’s probably in the dorm,” was James’s unconcerned reply.  “Or in the library.”

“Why?”

For the first time James glanced up from his game. “He—er—” And his eyes flickered to the people surrounding him. Lowering his voice so that only Sirius could hear, James said, “He didn’t do too well on Slughorn’s exam. Slughorn’s going to make him retake it during the break.”

Sirius’s frown deepened. Remus probably studied more than the three other Marauders put together, but, somehow, Remus still struggled in several classes. Potions was, by far, Remus’s worst subject. Sirius didn’t understand that at all. ‘ _It’s just following instructions,’_ he’d said to Remus once. Remus had smiled a small smile that looked more like a grimace. _‘We’re not all exceptionally gifted, Padfoot,’_ had been his mild reply.

“Why didn’t he ask us for help?”

“He did,” James said wearily.

Sirius was hit by a sudden memory from two nights before. He and James had been lounging around by the fire, staring lazily into it’s depths as their fellow students poured over books and notes. Peter was in the library, and Remus had just come downstairs, looking paler and more haggard than normal. His hair stuck up almost as badly as James’s, dark circles ringed his eyes, and he was carrying the potions textbook in his hands.

‘ _Hey, Padfoot, can you explain something to me_?’ Remus had asked, biting his lip. _‘I don’t quite understand…’_

But Sirius had just laughed. ‘ _Go away, Moony. Can’t you see I’m busy relaxing?_ ’

A dark blush had appeared on Remus’s cheeks and he had turned on his heel and walked up the stairs. James had followed Remus upstairs to offer to help him instead, but had come back down stairs almost right away.

‘ _He said thanks but no thanks_ ,’ James had sighed, sinking back into the chair. He’d given Sirius a dirty look. ‘ _You hurt his feelings_. _Can’t you be a little nicer to him_?’

‘ _Come off it Prongs. Moony’s smart, he can figure it out for himself_.’

“Ah,” said Sirius. “Shit.”

And he made his way through the crowd of Gryffindors who weren’t laden with the burden of being the biggest arse in the world.

Sirius mentally cursed himself at every single step. He often did or said things that he regretted later, and he often hurt people without intending to. He usually didn’t worry too much about these glaring faults of his, or other people’s feelings but—it was _Moony_ , whom he’d hurt. Moony, who smiled and laughed as if the universe wasn’t cruel to him, and was never mean to anyone. Moony, who didn’t deserve any of the bad things that life had dealt him, and certainly didn’t deserve a friend who blew him off when he needed him.

And now Moony had failed, all because, he, Sirius, had been too much of an arse to explain something to him.

 _That’s not the only reason he failed,_ Sirius told himself reasonably. _But, if I had helped him in general, instead of sitting around and being a_ _prat_ _, he would have done better._

_Oh well, I can make it up to him now._

“Moony?” Sirius said, opening the door to their room.

Remus sat cross legged on his bed, book and notes splayed all around him as he bent over them, studying them intently. He jumped when Sirius said his name and looked up. Sirius could see that Remus’s expression was tired and defeated looking, before Remus expertly smoothed his features into a more pleasant expression.

“Hey Padfoot,” Remus said easily, a small, genuine smile forming on his lips.

 _How can you smile at me like that when I’ve been so horrible to you?_ Sirius wanted to know, but then it dawned on him: _You’re probably used to it by now._

The thought made him annoyed with himself.

“Prongs told me you messed up The Draught of the Living Death pretty badly,” Sirius said, closing the door behind him.

Remus ran a hand though his hair, making it stick up even more. “Yeah, I think I did. It’s supposed to come out clear, right? Mine never changed from currant-colored. And then I tried to retrace my steps to see what I’d done wrong, but I got mixed up….” Remus trailed off, staring distantly into the empty space in front of him as though reliving the experience.

“It’s not your fault,” Sirius said, moving  a few of Remus’s notes so that he could sit next to Remus. “The day we went over that in class, you’d been out, right? It was the day after Full, I think.”

Remus shrugged. “Even if I’d been in class, I doubt it would have made more sense to me.”

The shadows fell across Remus’s face and exaggerated the dark circles under his eyes. In that moment, Remus looked ghostly pale and his hand trembled ever so slightly as he reached out to turn the page of his book.

Sirius grabbed that hand, intercepting it and preventing it from reaching its destination.

Remus looked at him, eyebrows coming together, but Sirius just stared resolutely back, gripping Remus’s hand tighter and, demanding, “When’s the last time you had a decent night’s sleep, Moony?”

Remus smiled a little. “I’m alright, Padfoot.”

Sirius frowned. He had been doing that a lot in the last hour or so. “That’s not what I asked.”

“Isn’t it?” was Remus’s mild reply. He tugging back gently, trying to free his hand from Sirius’s crushing grip.

Sirius let go. “You need to sleep, Moony.”

 He chucked off his shoes, gathered Remus’s notes and stuffed them into Remus’s Potions book before setting them on Remus’s trunk.

“Hey!” protested Remus. “I need to study those!”

“No, you don’t.” Sirius said firmly, laying back on the bed dragging Remus down with him. “You need to sleep.”

Remus tried to free the back of his robes from Sirius’s hand.

“I’m not like you and James, Sirius. I need to study if I’m going to do any better at my second shot at the Draught of the Living Death.”

“I’ll help you study tomorrow and the next day, and however long it takes you to learn it, I swear. I’ll answer any question you have and I’ll even got through it step by step with you if you want. But you need to go to sleep. Right now.”

Remus stopped struggling. He stared down at Sirius—from his half sitting-half-lying down position that Sirius had pulled him into—as though he wasn’t quite sure what to make of Sirius. Finally, he said,

“You will? You’ll really help me?”

Sirius held Remus’s gaze deliberately. “I swear.”

Remus’s face broke into a wide grin, and, for a moment, much of the weariness vanished from his face. “Thanks, Padfoot. You’re the best.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have this idea that Sirius was kind of casually insensitive in a way that James, Remus, and Peter were not (and I think it's an interesting difference to make particularly between Sirius and James just because they are usually painted with one brush, so to speak).This idea mainly stems from the lets-tell-Snape-about-the-werewolf-thing incident. This is one of my attempts to explore that casual cruelty.


End file.
